From the :
Research by three New Zealand scientists may have solved the mystery of why glaciers behave differently in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
Geologist David Barrell of GNS Science, Victoria University geomorphologist Andrew Mackintosh and glaciologist Trevor Chinn of the Alpine and Polar Processes Consultancy have helped provide definitive dating for changes in glacier behaviour.
They were part of a team of nine scientists, led by Joerg Schaefer of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, who used an isotope-dating technique to get very precise ages for glacial deposits near Mt Cook.
They measured the build-up of beryllium-10 isotopes in surface rocks bombarded by cosmic rays to pinpoint dates when glaciers in the Southern Alps started to recede. The technology is expected to be widely applied to precisely date other glaciers around the world.
Glaciers are sensitive indicators of climate changes, usually advancing when it cools and retreating when it warms.
The first direct confirmation of differences in glacier behaviour between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the new work topples theories based on climate in the Northern Hemisphere changing in tandem with the climate in the Southern Hemisphere.
The research argues that at times the climate in both hemispheres evolved in sync and at other times it evolved differently in different parts of the world.
Dr Barrell said their research presented “new data of novel high precision”, though the team has so far chosen not to roll out wider interpretations too quickly.
He said much of it reinforced work done 30 years ago by Canterbury University researcher Professor Colin Burrows, who used NZ glacier data to highlight some of the similarities and differences between northern and southern records over the past 12,000 years.
The paper published in Science magazine yesterday showed the Mt Cook glaciers advanced to their maximum length 6500 years ago, and have been smaller ever since.
But glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced to their maximum only in the past 700 years – during the Northern Hemisphere’s “Little Ice Age”, which ended about 1860.
During some warm periods in Europe, glaciers were advancing in New Zealand. At other times, glaciers were well advanced in both areas.
In a commentary which accompanied the research, Greg Balco, from the Berkeley Geochronology Centre in California, said the conclusion that glacier advances in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres were not synchronised was “unexpected”.
Dr Barrell said the paper presented only the first instalment of the dating work, and more would be revealed at an international workshop on past climates to be held at Te Papa on May 15.
“The New Zealand findings point to the importance of regional shifts in wind directions and sea surface temperatures,” he said.
Regional weather patterns such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation were superimposed on the global climate trends reflected in the behaviour of glaciers.
– NZPA
(h/t to Leon Broznya)
This surely is evident from Ice Cores from GISP and Antarctica for decades?
The significantly long Younger Dryas cold period is all but missing from the antarctic cores but is present in the Greenland.
GISP warms 14500 ya to a 0C anomaly then by 13000 ya is back down at -17C anom. Warming to 0C anomaly begins 12000 reaching 0C by 10000ya
Antarctic EPICA data shows warming to -5C 14500ya then “stable until 12500ya followed by warming to 0C anomaly 11500ya
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6826/iceage040kkq1.jpg
Michael T
I have published a paper that links changes in the position of the Earth’s magnetic field with global temperatures, you can see it on my website. I would appreciate your comments. I seem to remember recently some thoughts that the majority of the GCRs that might affect weather would be taken out in the upper atmosphere such that we would not see much variation at the Earth’s surface.
Hope lunch was good
steptoefan,
Two quick responses:
The cosmic ray variability should be relatively constant for NH and SH data. So the researchers can compare same-year data confidently. That allows apples-apples comparisons about whether they are in or out of sync.
I don’t know specificly (the article may say or other research might reveal) but there are probably other signals available (outside the specific data set for glaciers) that can provide year-to-year CR variability estimates.
Awww, E.M. and Lindsay H beat me to it. I’d come to believe that water vapor/precipitation coupled with temperature were the most important factors in determining whether a glacier will advance or retreat. Those are local phenomena, eh?
So what’s the major driver of precipitation and temperature on multi-decadal scales? Ocean currents and the jet stream would get my vote over CO2 any day.
Wouldn’t it be nice if mankind were as smart as he makes himself out to be?
Climate research obviously must involve the earth, the solar system and the universe. The impact of the location of the earth, in the various streams of energy and particles following around the Milky Way and all the stuff in between must be included. Who knows what our solar system encounters in it’s journey within and without the Milky Way. The effects of all this on life on earth are just beginning to be explored.
Who wants to do the research and then write a paper about how the changing earth’s magnetic field effects the climate with the changing effects of cosmic rays? It seems only logical that cosmic rays, which come in a wide spectrum of energy values, would have localized effects, causing varying precipitation factors, depending on magnetic filed strength and pole location.
Got to love this Al Gore, “the investor betting big bucks on carbon regulation and trading” Most people would see this as a huge conflict of interest — Making anything he says null and void … What we know about how earth’s climate works, you could write a book. What we don’t know about how earth’s climate works, you could fill a library.
Tom Fuller: Do you believe that there is enough oil and gas left in the ground to double, then double again, then double again, the c02 content?
Claude Harvey, et al.:
I believe your logic has a flaw–That the two hemispheres climates must mirror in amplitude as well as phase. Both papers can be right.
Tom Fuller – Second Ryan’s question but nice post.
Agree your concerns and IMO we need the MSM to raise its game with proper informed critical commentary instead of partisan advocacy. The energy question is fundamental – maybe I’m showing a lack of economic sophistication but IMO that is what modern economies are really all about: replacing manual labour (work) with energetic input sourced from natural reserves. The future should be about how we do this in a sustainable and globally equitable way using the best science to inform and facilitate it.
Ryan C,
That was my first thought, too. It’s human nature to assume that trends will continue indefinitely. But trees don’t keep growing until they reach the moon. Every cycle contains the seeds of its own reversal.
All of the real world evidence available indicates that CO2 is not harmful, that it does not cause significant [or even measurable] warming, and that more CO2 is beneficial to all life on Earth.
It is the baseless demonization of “carbon” that is deceitful. The only putative evidence for runaway global warming comes from computer models, programmed by people with certain expectations.
But the planet does not agree with the computer models: as CO2 rises, the temperature has been flat to declining. The CO2=AGW hypothesis has been falsified by the planet itself.
adrian kerton (03:53:17) :
H’mmm – most interesting, thank you very much for the link, Adrian. You do state in the abstract that “Movement of the poles changes the geographic distribution of galactic and solar cosmic rays, moving them to particularly climate sensitive areas” – from which I might infer that local variation of field strength could also possibly cause local climate variation? I guess I need to get hold of your complete paper and do some thinking about this…
Lunch was very good, thanks (typical english roast beef and yorkshire, nice bottle of burgundy).
Ryan C (04:50:24) :
Tom Fuller: Do you believe that there is enough oil and gas left in the ground to double, then double again, then double again, the c02 content?
Add coal to the equation…And there probably is enough fossil “carbon” left to do that. Before all of that carbon was bound up in fossil fuels, the Earth’s atmosphere had about 4000ppm to 7000ppm CO2.
Although, since plant stomata data suggest that CO2 levels of 380ppm were not uncommon in the early Holocene, I think the Earth is easily handling our current output of anthropogenic CO2.
Referring to the other article on NZ caves where the comments are closed, there was a book written about 40 years ago about these warm periods in NZ, one about 1100 and a couple of later ones I think just before Cook arrived. The author thought they where caused by the sun getting hotter. The interesting part was that during each period most of the westerly facing forest was flattened by severe hurricanes, the stumps of the trees can be seen as bumps in the ground in many places today, there was also serious flooding. Today most of the trees over 400 years old are to be found in valleys that were sheltered. It was an interesting book written before global warming, certainly agw, was known about, altho I doubt sold much. If anyone is interested I will try and find the name of the book and the author.
It is clear that the climate of the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere are not sync’ed.
At least the ocean cycle influences do not operate in tandem.
The ENSO has more impact on the NH than the SH. The North Atlantic and the South Atlantic almost operate like a dipole with one going up while the other is going down (not perfectly, just in general).
The temperature trends over the last 130 years show that there is a quite a divergence between the two (although the difference seems to closing over the past year or two.)
I imagine something like the solar impact is similar other than periods of time when the Milankovitch cycles changes the orbit so that summer periods for example are much different between the hemsipheres. Right now, the Earth is closest to the Sun during the SH summer but the difference is fairly small. During the ice ages, it seems this differential grows so that there is much less snow melt in NH summer. (I haven’t seen any info on this differential 6,500 years ago, maybe it went the other way for a period of time.)
And just because the Medieval Warm Period is not sync’ed in time between different regions of the planet, does not mean it did not exist. That is just the faulty logic that the pro-AGW crowd uses to get rid of it. We should just change the name of it to the Medieval Warm Period(s).
tarpon (04:49:27) :
“Who wants to do the research and then write a paper about how the changing earth’s magnetic field effects the climate with the changing effects of cosmic rays? It seems only logical that cosmic rays, which come in a wide spectrum of energy values, would have localized effects, causing varying precipitation factors, depending on magnetic filed strength and pole location.”
Tarpon,
For what it’s worth, the name is a.o. Svensmark
His theory stating that low solar winds and low magnetic field allow penetration of cloud seeding intergalactic particles into our atmosphere.
More cloud cover at low to medium altitudes causes cooling.
(I can’t reproduce the theory in any shorter way)
The theory is not without opposition (Leif Svalgaard for example states that this theory is BS Bad Science) but it is carried a.o. by David Archibald and Nir Sharviv.
At least NZ can provide the Northern Hemisphere with much needed wool for those impending long, cold winters..
Oz may have to provide wheat too…
This fit’s with my latest post.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/05/03/global-sea-ice-nears-record-high/
I was messing around with the gridded NSIDC data and found that sea ice levels globally are greater than 98% of all previous values.
Tom Fuller
What Obama energy plan are you referring to? If it is a plan to stop using fossil fuels and replace the energy with taxes, that is not a plan. If it is a plan to start using smart energy, I am all for it but what is smart energy. If the plan is to use green energy how many people are we going to starve to achieve the green goal. If the plan is to continue to ban nuclear power, that is grossly ignorant.
The point here is that glacial synchrony was on and off. It would then seem to me that a reasonable hypothesis is that there are multiple temperature-affecting cycles of varying length that occasionally and mathematically are capable of being in grand sync. This does not disprove the LIA. In fact it does just the opposite. It reveals that it is possible, in the past, as well as in the future, for the planet as a whole to occasionally heat up as well as cool down (not exactly on the hour but you get my point). I suspect that eventually, a new word or phrase will be coined to label the long and short term regional and sometimes global weather pattern variation affects of Earth-bound oscillations.
So I’ll take a stab at it.
Short and long term synchronic-capable Earth-bound oscillations.
I believe this could be computerized and modeled with a fair degree of %-chance certainty of occurrence, much like what has been done with earthquake and volcanic %-chance certainty of occurrence. Once the oceanic oscillation affect has been modeled and shown to be more closely correlated to current observations than CO2 models are (which I believe has already been done), further investigation can be fine tuned to discover how oscillating trade winds encourage these oceanic oscillations. Then they can also be modeled or added to the formula. After that proves relatively valid and reliable, cyclical columnar equatorial heat build-up as a trigger to trade winds can be added (if indeed my brainstorm idea is a part of it). The final piece would be Coriolis affects on trade winds and whether or not Coriolis affects are cyclical as well. To be sure, there are axial spin and tilt cycle wobbles that are already known and should be added as well.
The first person or agency to model this as a valid and reliable theory, will earn about as much praise as any one person or agency has ever collected. It will go down in history much like Galileo’s thinking.
Imagine that, a modern day renaissance human speaking out against the dark ages of our time.
No strong evidence that the climate is too complex to put in a box of simplistic notions.
As mentioned above glaciers on opposite sides of the same mountain can do different things at the same time. Here in the Rockies we can have 150% of snowpack in one drainage basin and 70% of normal snow back just a few miles away in another drainage basin. Prevailing wind conditions (direction and moisture content) have a lot more to do with snow accumulation than temperature does.
All you have to do is look at lake effect snow amounts near the great lakes to see how significant moisture content can be in a single storm. The eastern face of the Rockies have very heavy snow falls when a low center sets up on the south east corner of Colorado and suck warm moist air up from the gulf of mexico. If it is cool enough the up slope flow that develops can dump 3 ft of snow in the Denver Metro area in a little over 24 hours in a single storm.
The greatest amount of snowfall from one storm in Denver was 45.7 inches from December 1-6, 1913 (with 37.6 inches recorded between December 4-5th 1913). Very interesting! The Georgetown blizzard of 1913 dumped 86 inches of snow just west of Denver.
In 1961 and 1982 we had similar heavy snow falls. The record 24 hour snowfall was 23.6 Inches in on December 24th 1982 (The snow totals for the storm were nothing short of incredible. Golden Gate Canyon to the west of the city received 48 inches, Thornton 34 inches, Littleton 29 inches and Denver had almost 25 inches. )
During the Christmas Blizzard of 1982 here in Denver I was driving nurses home from work at the hospitals and was driving through head light deep snow in the residential areas of Arvada in a full sized Jeep Cherokee (head lights about 48 inches off the road surface)
It would only take a couple seasons of prevailing winds set up to bring recurring snow falls of that sort, to significantly impact the glaciers in Rocky Mountain Park northwest of Denver.
During other years when the prevailing wind flow comes from the west, it can be very dry here in the Platte River drainage.
From a national weather service summary:
As you can see your annual precipitation can range from 7.48 inches of precipitation to 23.31 inches. If a large fraction of that higher number comes mostly during sub freezing weather that makes for significant snow accumulation.
Glacier growth has more to do with the balance between total seasonal snow fall and snow melt during the summer season than it does from temperatures alone.
Larry
O/T – Hadley has issued the CET figure for April which is 10.0 making it 13= in the overall record and on a par with 1762, 1733, 1949, 1792, 1755, and1961. In 1755 the May temperature was 0.6 LOWER so keep wrapped up warm, guys!
Adrian Kerton,
I am having trouble accessing your website. Could you give me the site here so that I can just click on it ?
Many thanks.
Extensive reseach on glacial advance and retreat in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world shows that glaciers were almost exactly (within the limits of 10Be and 14C dating) synchronous in both hemispheres during the last ice age, including the Younger Dryas. My own research in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world has established beyond reasonable doubt that climates have changed at the same times at many places in the N and S Hemispheres (see http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~dbunny/research/global/index.htm). Before rushing to conclude that this study shows a different pattern in the more recent past, let’s wait for the paper to come out and see exactly what was dated. 10Be dating isn’t accurate enough to show variations over a few decades or centuries.
s wa
Tom Fuller, I believe that the majority feel the same way and we know that in the end we will need to stop using fossil fuels. If the politicians wanted to though they could have come up with good arguments why we should reduce carbon consumption now but they didn’t. What angers many is that they did not use truth and honesty but jumped on the scare scenarios of the environmentalists. Not because they believed it but because it is politically expedient for them to go that way. In many ways though the scare mongers have damaged their cause possibly fatally because now very few people actually believe them after the initial scare. They are beginning to look like fools.
Whilst we must eventually find alternatives to FF’s, given the coming energy crunch, surely we would be stupid to deny ourselves their use now. they are still an incredible energy form.
Re: Tom Fuller
They are most probably correct in saying that a simple doubling of CO2 will not cause catastrophe, but are intentionally ignoring that another re-doubling and perhaps yet a further re-doubling of CO2, and the effluent that would accompany it, would, as the conventional environmental wisdom has it, carry costs we do not want to bear–or sometimes even contemplate.
Let it go,co2, if even quadrupled will have no effect on temps.There is NO proof that it contributes to warming and there will never be any proof.
AGW is still a wonderfully exagerated theory and one that will go down with the flat earth debate.
Your energy and time would be better spent on matters more detrimental to society .i.e.,the elimination of christianity in the world by terrorists and the robbing of the wealth from the middle class by the elitist government and corporate america.
GOD BLESS
A little gem in that piece is how, as an aside, they refer to Al Gore not as a politician or a former vice-president or even an environmental activist, but as “the investor betting big bucks on carbon regulation and trading,”
The 1st signs of a trading scheme. Follow the money. Yell fire in one place and places the call halfway around the globe. Nobody will ever know. That’s a subject for bloodhounds.